Friday, June 15, 2012

Liquid Gold

First jar of honey from our bees.

Isn't that a beautiful jar of Liquid Gold??? AKA, Fresh Honey?!

When we started on this journey to liquid gold a year ago, we could hardly wait for that first honey harvest! Now that it's here, I was faced with how to extract all that sweet deliciousness that I risked a thousand stings for (thankfully, no stinging was involved yesterday!).

Readers, google is your friend. I simple googled "how to extract honey without an extractor" and I found Linda's Bees, a blog my dear friend keljonma had first introduced me to! She has LOADS of great information in her over 1000 blog posts on bee keeping!

After watching her neat video on the crush and strain method of extracting honey, I had 2 thoughts 1) I don't have a pestle and 2) I don't have a bucket like hers!

What I DID have, which was a total impulse buy on my part, was the honey strainer! $6 at the local beek supply. I have no idea why I insisted on buying it at the time, but I think God knew I'd need it.

Honey comb in glass bowl, before crushing.

Pampered Chef gadget used to for crushing...

Crushed up and ready to go to the strainer...

I also had a glass bowl, and this nifty kitchen gadget from Pampered Chef that was a Christmas gift from my BFF. Not sure what the actual name of it is, but I'll call it a masher! I use it for almost EVERYTHING, and I think there's defnitely a need for 2 or 3 more of them in my kitchen! :)

So after I got the comb all crushed up, I used a spatula to shove it into the strainer. Ok, shove may not be the best word, but you know what I mean ;)

using a spatula...

I pushed it all into the strainer...

draining into the glass bowl underneath...

My glass bowl sat on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, to help keep the mess contained/limited. Everything was pretty sticky.

At this point, it was near midnight, so I covered the strainer with plastic wrap and went to bed.

This morning, this is what the honey comb looked like.

I spooned all the left over comb into a freezer bag to store for later use.

This is 2 cups of honey. I used a measuring cup to pour the honey into 8 ounce jelly jars.